| dc.description.abstract | The advent of new green infrastructure systems (decentralized, small-scaled facilities and spaces to produce energy, food, water, recycle wastewater, and dispose of organic waste based on renewable energy sources) offers the potential to transform the types of uses, landscapes and meanings of traditional urban public spaces. In cities around the world, the merging of green infrastructure and public spaces are generating a new typology of spaces (see figures 1 to 5). Yet, while such spaces are on the rise everywhere, little academic attention has been given to this new public spatial typology. No academic articles and less than a handful of books in the English literature are devoted to explore the merging of green infrastructure with the design of urban public open space. Even specialized journals that combine landscape design with urbanism give a cursive treatment to the role of green infrastructure systems in shaping urban form (see for example Topos 2010a, 2010b, 2009). This vacuum in the literature is surprising given that the benefits of providing ecosystem services in the middle of cities with no risks to human health may herald new and exciting typologies of public and semi-public space. This chapter calls for a renewed research-based examination of the future of public spaces as a result of their new potentials for providing cities with ecosystems services, new urban space typologies, and new knowledge on spatial design. | en_US |
